Fimbulwinter
by muddpuppy
Summary: She was the Harbinger of Fimbulwinter, the great frost that would set off the Ragnarok, during which the god Loki was said to perish. As soon as he hears of the Harbinger's existence, he sets off to find and kill her, but when he finds Elsa, he begins to see a different path. Can he gain Elsa's allegiance or will she become too powerful for him to control?


The cold screeched _power_ in a crackling, lustful voice. The hounds of the wind bayed blood into the night. There was no sleep in Jotunheim. There was never sleep in Jotunheim.

"The bowl is full," whispered Sigyn.

"Do what you must," Loki replied. His wife reached out and touched a hand to his scarred and pitted cheek, tears filling her eyes. Then she stood, leaving her husband bound to the jagged rock, and went to empty the bowl of venom into the mouth of the river. The wolf Fenrir growled as she passed, but she payed the beast no heed. He would not escape until the onset of Ragnarok. Neither of them would.

Her heart shattered again as she heard the cries of her husband. Soon enough, she would be out of hearing, but she would never be out of range of the pain he was in. She felt every drop of venom as though it fell on her own face. She knew it must be even worse for him.

What she did not know was that below her, in Midgard, a goddess was planting the seed that would set her husband free. At the exact moment she pour the serpent's venom into the mouth of the river, far away and across heavens and hells, a girl with white hair took her first breath.

Fenrir shifted in his chains.

_Don't cry. Conceal, don't feel. Hold it in._

Elsa was doing her best to hold it in. She held her breath until her chest was tight with pent-up tears, twisting painfully inside of her like a writhing serpent waiting to strike. She imagined that the serpent had razor-sharp scales that slid across the inside of her throat like a million tiny knives and that its naked fangs dripped poison that made her mouth feel like cotton and her head like rocks and her limbs like dead things attached to a living, active body.

She gasped in a desperate, searing breath and then fell again into silence, squeezing her eyes shut as she deprived herself of oxygen once more.

_Don't cry. Conceal, conceal, conceal_.

The air around her was too hot, and it burned her cheeks like a branding iron. Her back was to the door, her hands were pressed against the ground, and cool frost was creeping across her vision, spiraling up her arms, climbing the door like a lazy kitten. The cold was playful; always playful.

Just like Anna. A cry of despair escaped the crowned princess as her sister's face sprang to the forefront of her mind. She quickly quashed the surge of emotions, shoving them down with the hopeful pleading of the cold.

_Conceal, don't feel. Don't let it show._

There was a knock at the door.

"Elsa?" Anna asked softly. "Please, I know you're in there. People are asking where you've been."

_Foolish girl_, she thought viciously, hiding her face in her hands and taking more gasping breaths of air. The cold coiled around her, rising like bile in her throat. She tried to block out Anna's broken voice, but it was impossible not to hear her sister's pleas.

"They say have courage and I'm trying to. I'm right out here for you, just let me in," Anna continued in a soft, wheedling voice. "We only have each other. It's just you and me. What are we going to do?"

_Hold it in. Push it down. don't cry_.

A tear dripped down Elsa's cheek, freezing on her icy skin. The cold swirled around her, surging forward, across the room, dancing up to the vaulted ceiling. Once again, Elsa tried to hold her breath.

"Do you want to build a snowman?" Anna asked, the pressure of her back falling against the door. Elsa choked back a sob and leaned against the frozen wood, opening her mouth in a silent cry of pain and sorrow. When she opened her eyes, it was to swirling white. It was beauty beyond normal reach of the mortal world, but all Elsa saw was failure. She would never be in control.

The Earth trembled.

The cold was silenced.

The hounds of the wind stood still.

A playful snowflake landed on Elsa's nose.

In the Realm of Giants, the great wolf Fenrir tested his chains once more.

Fimbulwinter began.

Loki raised his head, the hair on the back of his neck standing on-end. There was something trembling in the still, silent air. "Sigyn," he murmured, his voice hoarse from screaming and disuse.

"I feel it, too," she said quietly. Loki hesitated, hardly daring to believe that it could really be the end of his sentence.

"Stand away from me," he commanded, looking down the river to see his son shifting in his own bindings. "Do you feel the cold, wolf?" he called to the shifting beast. He received only a joyful, hysteric growl in response, but it was enough. The bound god flexed his arms, then his legs, grinning widely as he felt the bindings give. Savage pleasure surged through him as he remember all the times he had pushed against the bindings and felt nothing but the bite and pressure of them in his skin. How cruel, he had thought it, for them to tie him up in the entrails of his son.

More than anything else, Loki wanted revenge. He had been kept there in the wilds of Jotunheim for millennia, bound up in the darkest sort of magics. They were curses and charms he was well acquainted with administrating but not fond of enduring. But he could have stood all of it - the years of stillness, the indignity of being chained, the boredom of incarceration - All these things he could have abided by. But not the serpent.

The hounds of the wind aided him, tearing at the entrails of Nari, freeing the Lord of Chaos as the frenzy of the great winter fell upon them. Slowly, one by one, his bindings fell away. For the first time in forever, Loki stood and raised his hands away from his sides. Beyond him, his wife and son watched in fear and awe of his rising. There was a fierce ugliness to him that had not been there when he was first bound. His nose was hooked and his hair hung in dark, limp curtains around his face. Yellow eyes glowered out from behind the dark swathes, strikingly set in deep, gritty cheekbones. Everything about him was razor-sharp. Angular. He was skeletal to the extreme but possessed a different but entirely more frightening kind of power.

With a scream of fury, Loki tore down the serpent that had plagued him all those thousand thousand years. Great wings beat at the ground, and Loki rose as an eagle, the serpent clutched tightly in his serrated talons.

When he was high in the air, he took the serpent and ate it, swallowing down the poison that had scarred his face and back. It plagued him no more.

Spiraling back to the ground and hailed by the hounds of the wind, Loki screeched along with the cold, laughing as he tore away Fenrir's shackles and watched his son shake out matted black fur. "Rise!" he cried, opening his arms and embracing freedom. "Rise and kill!"

With a growl of happiness, Fenrir bounded away to do his father's bidding, the hounds of the wind following him down to Midgard.

"Enjoy your freedom while it lasts," said a cool voice.

"Skadi," Loki said softly, a tender smile on his face. He turned toward the Goddess of Winter and offered a mocking bow. "It has been a long time since last I saw you."

"You will meet your end at Ragnarok," she hissed, her white-blond hair flowing around her, her blue eyes glinting in the snow. The hounds of the wind cowered around her, licking her hands in hopes of appeasing her. She simply brushed them away, and they fell dead and frozen at her feet. "You feel the cold as well as I do, Loki. Do you think you can evade your fate?" she asked coldly.

Loki laughed at her insolence, reaching out the the hounds, his brothers in the art of chaos. The wind fluttered back to life and huddled around him, looking fearfully at the Goddess of Winter as her fury seemed to grow colder.

"Foolish girl," Loki sneered, stepping toward her. "I will have my vengence. I will find whatever harbinger you've chosen for this little storm and lay her dead at your feet. Your winter will betray you, Ice Witch. Mark my words."

Skadi drew her finely-furred cloak around her and lifted her chin. "The cold never bothered me, anyway," she said with a cold glare. Then a smile flashed across her face, and she lifted a finger to point at Sigyn, a spike of white frost shooting forth from her fingertips. The frothy white frost passed straight through the heart of Loki's wife.

"Sigyn!" Loki cried, rushing forward and catching her as she fell. Skadi watched with a smile on her face.

"The cold never bothered me anyway," she snapped, turning and disappearing in a flash of white. The hounds of the wind trembled around Loki and his falling wife, mourning and celebrating and climbing the skies. Loki could only watch as his companion's hair turned white and patterns of snowflakes clawed their way up her arms.

Sigyn turned to ice.

The hounds of the wind bayed and sprinted.

The cold screamed in pleasure.

Snow fell on Midgard.

Elsa wept.


End file.
